


White Pearl, Black Skies

by yorkisms



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Almost poetry but not quite, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Mass Effect 1-2, References to Depression, Shepard's dead but she gets better, Songfic, very generic chaotic good paragade shepard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-06-30 21:12:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15759783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yorkisms/pseuds/yorkisms
Summary: Garrus loses Shepard.Then, he finds her again.





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> The idea of the series of songs "White Pearl Black Oceans" and "White Pearl Black Oceans part II: By the Grace of the Sea" covering the arc between Mass Effects 1 & 2 occurred to me, and it wouldn't let me go. 
> 
> So here's some introspective shakarian, because, well, why not?
> 
> Chapter 2 on Mass Effect 2 tomorrow, probably.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Moments, passion, small defeats_   
>  _Concealed emotions, found in me_   
>  _  
> **"You gave life to a brand new me..."**  
>  _

From Palaven to the Citadel, every day involves something. A criminal, a piece of corruption to root out, and red tape. Really, once one is used to it, it can get kind of repetitive. 

Boring even. 

So perhaps “rogue SPECTRE” was a little  _ more _ of note than “the usual-” 

But Garrus Vakarian took it on as he would any other job. 

As though it would be over so easily. 

There were variables he could never have anticipated. The investigation itself, the  _ boring _ part, was long and frustrating. The red tape was endless. And then, at the end, asking for more time to  _ please _ let him past the walls of security tape and clearance that would let him know for  _ sure _ something was wrong, there she was. 

Shepard. 

Garrus had never really interacted with a human before her. Occasionally, never in depth. Passing greetings and farewells. A few coworkers, but not many. Garrus’ equals in C-Sec were more likely to speak his own mother tongue in all its dialects, and chirp stories of the colonies, or of Palaven, than of Earth and its own. 

Her eyes struck Garrus from their first greeting. How...un-turian of her, where most of their eyes were pale, hers were vibrant- oh, how she reminded him of the plants on Palaven. Vibrant, green, bright- but Garrus knew how to read anyone well enough to know that she would hold just as much resolve. 

It would take him a while to notice the things that would intrigue him most about humans- and this human- later. The small, accenting dots of darker flesh along her cheekbones- freckles. The soft, bright color of her hair. But right now, all that startles him about the human is her eyes.

_ “Commander Shepard. Garrus Vakarian. I was in charge of the C-Sec investigation into Saren.” _

Is it terrifying? Is the fate of the entire galaxy at stake? Does he enjoy getting to know her all the same?  _ Yes! _ Shepard is...well, she’s a fascinating woman. Garrus can’t deny that one bit. She does her best to do the right thing. She doesn’t believe, per se, in the law, but in the way things should be. 

And Garrus can’t fight  _ that _ , he’s been in C-Sec. Corruption is never law. His family always agreed, though, that a SPECTRE being above the law makes them no better than those they chase into the Terminus systems- into the Traverse. 

For the first time, Garrus thinks he’s forming a different opinion on that than he used to have. 

> __A nightmare awakes me, blinking light!  
>  There's no guide, blind ships in the night  
>  Oh blood red moon, eat away the night  
>  Darkness covers my lonely soul,  
>  No one to feed the dying light.

He’s supposed to be on the Normandy. With her.

She drops him off at the Citadel, where he said he was going to take a few week’s vacation then see what’s what. She grins devilishly, lets him go, and tells him she’ll be back in a week or two. 

She doesn’t come back. But because of her, everyone else does. 

Garrus paces himself into a frenzy of grief and confusion. Does he feel guilty? Only in part. Does he feel empty? Perhaps he does. Does he feel, does he feel, does he feel…

He just wishes he had been there. Shepard was his mentor, his friend, and he couldn’t have even been there when she died. 

But she wouldn’t want him to sink into himself in grief. She would want him to keep going. 

So Garrus keeps going, keeps going, as their old team splits and loses touch. 

Tali’zorah bids him farewell and returns to the fleet. There is nothing left for her in the world outside of her own kind. 

Wrex slaps him on the back and says he’s leaving to Tuchanka. The fragmented remains of krogan governance there need him- for what, Garrus doesn’t quite process, or care. They’re his own, and Wrex would always come to serve their greater good. 

Liara herself disappears back to the asari. She cites Thessia, possibly, but shrugs a shoulder and tells him,  _ “but I could go anywhere, as long as it is away from this.” _

He feels a sort of pulsing, lurking hatred from Alenko- Kaidan, Shepard would call him sometimes in moments of calm. Garrus isn’t quite sure if he did something, or if Alenko blames him as much as Garrus blames himself. But as they fade after Shepard’s funeral, emotions running high, he feels that perhaps Alenko resented Shepard’s respect for him. Jealousy. A touch of. 

Alenko tells him that night, hands shoved in his pockets, that he’s leaving like the others. To go to Earth. Garrus, knowing Shepard herself was born there, wonders how Alenko could even think to return. But Alenko, unlike Shepard, was always alliance first. And so to the Alliance, he is faithful.

They all go towards their own kind, but Garrus can’t quite imagine taking himself to Palaven now, after the life he has lived. The familiar comforts would hide so many hidden insults- the lush growths outside his family’s home no longer a pleasant sight, but a reminder of his loss. 

So Garrus Vakarian finds a drug smuggler who he interrogates into pointing him in a new direction, and takes his grieving bones to Omega. 

He isn’t scared of the Blue Suns, he isn’t scared of the Blood Pack, he isn’t scared of the Eclipse, and he sure as hell isn’t afraid of Aria T’loak. They can all try to kill him all they want. 

Garrus Vakarian is a turian soldier, ex-hastatim, a survivor, and he saved the galaxy from a threat unlike any other.  

And he might as well be already dead. 

 

> _ All on board the White Pearl have died,  _
> 
> _ Coastal reef has tolled their lives  _
> 
> _ While I was the guide light… _

 

In retrospect, it’s not surprising a team forms. Garrus, ever the trouble-magnet, finds Lantar Sidonis in a twisted little side-hall of Omega taking on a krogan, and, well, those are just the right circumstances to meet a partner. 

Garrus helps him back to their hideout more often than not- but not as often as the other way around. As he takes Sidonis home from a fight gone awfully right, the other turian chitters and rambles about his home colony- Nimines. 

“You’re from Palaven, right?” 

Garrus winces to himself. Sidonis knows he’s not one to talk about himself. 

The last person he talked about himself to was--

_ “I was almost a SPECTRE, you know.” _

\--her. 

“That’s in the past. I prefer to focus on things that are happening right now.” 

They all learn to avoid asking Archangel where he came from-

-and why this matters to him anyway.

 

> _ My little tower seal my fate _
> 
> _ Help me pay back this town’s hate  _
> 
> _ Black oceans beneath rise and swallow me. _

 

The people on Omega- the average citizen- love the persona of  _ Archangel. _

The gangs hate him.

Garrus wonders, sitting against the balcony of what had started to become his new home, if he should have expected the betrayal of Lantar Sidonis and the deaths of his teammates, the ones who had put their  _ faith _ and  _ life _ behind him. 

He has to regret many a thing from the past few years. There is little he cannot say he might want to change. But overall, Garrus knows: without hindsight on his side, he did all that he could. 

He has been awake for days on end, shooting mercenary after mercenary, angering the three gangs further. 

He knows he came here because he was already as good as a ghost, but-- 

One thing first. 

“--you know how it is. Could always use a couple more.” 

“Work with what you’ve got, then. Don’t stop pulling the trigger until it  _ clicks _ , son.” 

That’s his father alright. 

Garrus finds peace with the idea that the sea of bodies below will soon simply rise up and swallow him whole. 


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The music of my chosen gentle tide…_   
>  _Turned into a story on the other side_   
>  _A lone note in a lone vial_   
>  _**“We are alive”** _

And then? 

Garrus Vakarian, turian, soldier, ex-hastatim, sniper of repute, vigilante, savior of the galaxy and general bad boy--

-survives. 

It’s a dizzying sensation, for him, to wake up in the medical bay of the (new) Normandy. For a moment, he wonders if this is the after-life-- if she’s called him to her new world. 

Then the memories come flooding back. Shepard. Her backup. The gunship. 

Garrus’ mandibles hurt. 

He rolls out of his hospital bed, still feeling shaky, and wanders through the new ship. Things are different, now. Part of him appreciates the sleek black-and-white color scheme. 

Part of him misses the things about the Normandy that were pulled from turian warships and fighter jets. 

Part of him is still stunned to be here. 

While he puts on a mask to the others, he cannot choose to look away from her. 

Her eyes are the same, he thinks, so she must be the real thing. 

No clone, no artificial way of making a man, could re-create the vibrancy of Shepard’s face. So it’s her. She’s come back for him. 

 

> _Without names to tell, afraid to stay_
> 
> _We left, in rain and thunder_
> 
> _We ponder, if our dreams we're all handed_
> 
> _Only by the grace of the sea._

She keeps him close to her side. Him, and Tali’zorah, when the fleet permits her return. Garrus doesn’t blame her one bit. He watches his own back, choosing to fly with Shepard when Cerberus is writing her checks. 

She’d always been staunchly for human understanding of other species- so while people who don’t know Commander Shepard might think of her working with Cerberus suspiciously, Garrus feels confident that as soon as Cerberus tries to force their agenda on her, Shepard will take their ship, their technology, and strike out on her own.

He’s honored to be at her back until that time. 

And at the same time, that kind of intimacy can breed something new. 

It’s not long before she’s letting him closer than anyone could ever get. 

“Commander?” 

“Mmm?” 

“Your…” his face twitches thoughtfully. “‘Hair.’ Does it always look like that?” 

She practically collapses over a table in the mess with laughter. 

“It took you that long to even ask?” 

“Well, I--”

“No, no, it’s fine. Yes, I’m a natural redhead. Yes, I’ve been asked before. And Garrus?” 

“Yes, commander?” 

Shepard takes his talon in her own soft, fleshy hand, and lets it brush her hair. 

“Oh. It’s, uh...soft.” 

“You turians,” she teases. “Always thinking humans are soft.”

“Well, I think that’s because you are soft.”

“Yeah, and maybe I think you guys are a little rough around the edges,” she replies, giving him a friendly tap on the fringe as she stands up. “You’re just lucky I like that.”

Garrus has to wonder if that’s just how she does things with everyone- or if he’s just a little special in that regard.

Business continues all the same. There are fights, laws broken and not-broken, people helped or not helped, and Garrus finds that the tentative respect he had for Shepard the first time they met is now turning into a different sort of feeling. 

Rather than his deference, he feels freer to let her know more about him. To be her friend, not her subordinate.  

He tells her about  _ Palaven _ , about his father’s favorite place along the oceanside cliffs where he would take target practice daily as a child. 

“Like clockwork. Day after day. Did you think I was born with this aim?”

She laughs at that. 

“You make target practice sound so...noble. I got my practice with an old harpy and people’s discarded beer cans on the back streets of Las Vegas.”

“Las Vegas?”

“Earth city,” she clarifies, tracing a pattern onto the mess hall tabletop between them. “It’s basically the Omega of the earth. They call it sin city.” 

“It sounds like a terrible place.” 

Shepard makes a face of exaggerated disgust. “Yeah. Not worth a vacation, really.”

They talk about politics, but not in a way that makes it feel rough- instead, in a way that makes the both of them laugh, sometimes. 

“How old were you when the relay opened?” 

“Oh, I must have been pretty young,” Garrus muses. “Probably before Solana was even born.”

“Me too. Too young to run away and join the military just yet.” 

“Oh, it took a while for everyone my age to take over and understand it was all a misunderstanding. Forgive, but never forget.” 

“I’ll drink to that. Hell, I got no idea what we’d do if we discovered a new species just hitting space flight. We’d probably fight them too.”

“What did you think when you first saw a turian?”

“...what did you think when you first saw a human?” 

“‘What the hell is that?’” 

“Yeah. Me too.”

This intimacy escalates bit by careful bit, until, the night before they’re supposed to attempt one of the most dangerous missions ever conceived, and he’s in her bed. 

She’s undressed under him, and curse him, all he says is-

“So. You’re  _ into _ rough around the edges?”

-and her face contorts in peals of laughter, nose scrunched up, eyes squeezed shut. She laughs until she has tears in her (beautiful) eyes and she has to exhale to regain her composure at all.

She runs one hand down his side. Looks at him like she wants him, because she truly does. 

He can see that, and his chest fills with a warm sort of happiness he could never have conceived of before.

“You know, with you, big guy, I kinda am.” 

Garrus thinks that moment is more beautiful than the sex could ever be. 

As they return from the otherworldly place that the omega-four relay took them, Shepard looks at him. Of all of the team she could look at first to thank for their time, their help, their unbidden and unselfish service to her- him. 

She is tired and stained with the blood of collectors. She has lines under her eyes and her hands quiver with exhaustion. 

She grins at him anyway. Garrus’ mandibles twitch pleasurably. He can see it in her eyes, she doesn’t want to go anywhere but with him. Shepard was his mentor, was his friend, and now? He can say with confidence that he truly loves her. And they survive.

They are  _ alive. _

 

**Author's Note:**

> I appreciate feedback! 
> 
> My tumblr is maggie-wittington, and my writing gets cross-posted to writing-partners.


End file.
